I can't claim for a single second that this was my idea, but here is a wordle of BYT's main aims and its imagined future. (Thank you Marcus Romer, thank you Chris Hammond.) Now that the world is shaped differently, and the future is shifting and always tantalisingly out of reach, and whilst there are still things to attend to make it all happen, it seemed pertinent to share our wordle here too. What's interesting about this wordle are the five main words that jump out - youth work young people theatre. I have been trying for some time to pin down our USP and perhaps that covers it? That is what we do - youth work young people theatre.
Of course, that isn't all we do - as the wordle demonstrates... we're ambitious about technology, about engaging young people wherever they are and about extending our practice to include young people excluded from participation. We feel incredibly fortunate to have our amazing space - and are looking to develop it beyond ourselves as a hub of excellence for youth theatres in general. As a designated youth space, one thing we can do is encourage young people to get involved, have their say, and make their own work - and we can prioritise that here. We can say that the work of young people is central to what we do because it is. I extend an invite to any young person who wants to make theatre to come to us and talk to us about it... this is the place for you to do precisely that. Any young emerging young artist needs to look us up and get in touch. The space at BYT needs you...
But that isn't all we do. We are also about the bigger picture: opening up possibilities for young people to really grab hold of, to shake things up, try them on for size, shape the world, change it - think long and hard about what is possible. We say - at the youth theatre - you can imagine yourself differently - you can imagine the world differently.
My mother used to have a habit of using a phrase all wrong - of making her own world and superimposing it on the real one. Many of her sayings are far too rude and sweary to record here but she often used to say things that were uniquely her own. If for example, you said that food was hot she would say, "You sit with your backside in the oven, and you'd be hot too." Another favourite, in response to my saying, "I really wish I had...." was "Poo in one hand and wish in the other and see which gets fullest first." (Obviously she didn't say backside and she didn't say poo!) These sayings and half sayings have served me very well over the years. She is a pragmatic down to earth person, believing that your feet should be on the ground, and that there is a world of difference between need and want.
Young people need a space to become themselves. Young people need to find a way of responding to and exploring the world. Young people need somewhere safe, somewhere to express themselves, to be creative - young people need a gateway into the cultural possibilities that the arts and theatre in particular can offer. They have that here at BYT in pragmatic, down to earth ways.
I have spent all day with another of my mother's idioms floating around my head. This week has been particularly exhausting and the whole team have been striving to ensure that the youth theatre has the future we hope for - we strive every week for this, of course, but this week has been especially pressing. As we sent off a particularly important application, I kept thinking, "Well, it's all over bar the shouting..."
The way my mother used to use this, I always felt that the worst had passed - that we'd given it our best shot and that we'd done all we could - not that we'd win necessarily but that it was finished with. And that's how I feel now. Who knows whether we'll get exactly what we want? Who knows if the future we imagined is the future that will come - but there will be a future, of one kind or another - that is certain and in that sense, it really is all over bar the shouting - as sure as eggs is eggs the future will come.
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